Digital Commons Network^™

Innovation And Deregulation: The Case Of Texas Electricity Companies, Millicent D. Delaney

All Dissertations

Deregulation has played an essential role in the restructuring and development of various industries. In the energy industry, deregulation has empowered consumers by offering them more provider choices, economic security, and affordability. It has reconstructed the energy transmission, distribution, and generation processes, thereby making energy more cost-effective for customers. Most studies in this area examined the impact of deregulation from consumers’ perspectives and mainly focused on European and other non-U.S. markets. There are not many studies that examined the impact of deregulation in the energy sector of the United States.

Therefore, this study is an examination of the impact of …

A Design Thinking Mixed Method Study On Social-Emotional Learning Lessons For Early Elementary Learners, Emily Woodall

Dissertations

Social emotional learning (SEL) had largely been absent from early elementary curriculum, despite research which indicated the need for specialized SEL curricula for unique groups, especially students identified as gifted and talented, exceptional students living in geographically isolated areas, and unidentified gifted students from historically disadvantaged minority groups, including African American, Latinx, and Native American. The researcher proposed an SEL pilot in early elementary grades, including pre-kindergarten and kindergarten, may create a scaffolded approach to SEL curricula throughout the students’ educational experiences with a focus on scaffolding to specific subgroups, such as gifted and talented students with unique SEL needs. …

Employee Perceptions Of Effective Leadership Styles In Promoting Employee Motivation In A Governmental Academic Workplace, Rachel Rene Goenaga

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Government business offices exhibit a variety of leadership styles, with bureaucratic leadership being particularly prevalent. As diverse as leadership approaches are, so too are employee work styles. Certain leadership styles can enhance employee motivation, while others may hinder it, ultimately affecting an organization's ability to achieve success and progress. This phenomenological study explored the perceptions of employees in governmental academic offices concerning the leadership styles that motivate them to be productive and engaged. Utilizing Bernard Bass’s leadership styles, the study examined how these approaches influence employee motivation in the workplace. The primary research question focused on employees' perceptions of these …

Childcare Service Organization' Portfolio Diversification Strategies For Increasing Income, Tynesha Douglass

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Some childcare providers in Maryland’s capital region lack strategies to diversify their service portfolio and increase profits, which can lead to business closure. Owners of childcare facilities are concerned with identifying methods for enhancing their sources of revenue to ensure business survival. Grounded in resource dependency theory, the purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore strategies that some childcare providers in Maryland’s capital region use to diversify their service portfolio and increase profits. The participants were four business owners of childcare organizations. Data were collected using semistructured interviews, excerpts from parent handbooks, and a review of publicly …

Coproduction Revisited: From Theory To Practice., Brenton Clarke Hereford

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Coproduction, or the interaction of citizens with their public service provider, has been used in policy responses to a myriad of service delivery problems, especially policing. This dissertation uses a three-manuscript approach to revisit coproduction both as a theory and a practice. The first manuscript tracks the evolution of coproduction as a theory from three different disciplines: economics, urban theory, and public administration. In addressing the three disciplines, the manuscript explains what broadly united the coproduction literature and the differences that hindered the early development of the concept. It concludes with how the concept is used today, and how future …

Research On Digital Platform Capabilities And Entrepreneurship Empowerment Performance Of Science And Technology Industrial Parks, Jieyu Zheng

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

In the era of the digital economy, industries are shifting toward platform-based and ecological trends, with industrial parks similarly adopting digital and platform-based patterns. The systematic planning, functional layout, and service efficiency of science and technology industrial parks (sci-tech industrial parks for short) are designed to address emerging industries’ spatial and organizational needs. This approach aims to create a system where digital transformation is employed as the mechanism and digital platforms empower entrepreneurial enterprises within these parks, fostering high-quality park development. However, despite efforts to build digital platforms for transforming into digital parks, many industrial parks have found their platform …

Sports Leadership And Team Performance: The Case Of Nfl Head Coaches, Nicole Adams

All Dissertations

This research aimed to isolate and emphasize the role of coaching in a sports team’s success within the National Football League (NFL) context, bridging the gap between academic research and practical applications in sports leadership. For this purpose, data from the 2014-2023 NFL seasons and Pro Football Reference were analyzed to evaluate the impact of coaches’ leadership styles on NFL teams’ performance. Extant literature focused on the characteristics of individual players, teams, and coaches, not necessarily related to leadership style, that can lead to team success. Thus, emphasizing the direct impact of leadership style represents a potentially significant contribution to …

Examining The Theory Of Planned Behavior As An Explanation For Why Some Creatives Learn To Use Generative Ai Tools, Navrose Bajwa

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can create art which earlier was restricted to humans. This involvement of AI in creating art poses risks of automation for the arts and design industry. One way with which artists can respond to this threat is to engage in proactive coping behavior and learn to use generative AI (GAI) for their work. Using an expanded version of Theory of Planned Behavior, this study looked at the predictors of graphic designer’s intentions to learn how to use GAI for art and design work. It was hypothesized that attitudes, social norms, perceived behavioral control and automation awareness would …

Drselects: Designing Change Sig’S Mauricio Mejía, Luca Simeone And Sabine Junginger, Mauricio Mejía, Luca Simeone, Sabine Junginger

DRSelects

No abstract provided.

Three Essays Examining Technology Adoption And The Role Of Physicians In Improving Efficiency, Quality And Reducing Risk In Healthcare Supply Chains, Rajib Dutta

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Hospitals across the USA are operating under extreme financial stress and looking for opportunities to improve financial stability and maximize bottom-line savings. As supply chain function accounts for up to 40 percent of total hospital operating cost, hospital leaders are increasingly viewing the healthcare supply chain as a potential area for efficiency gain and cost reduction. The recipe for effective and efficient care delivery is to synchronize the flow of supplies with patient needs by integrating products, processes, and information while complying with government regulations. Therefore, proper management of inventory, role of government policies in shaping hospital strategies, adoption of …

Seeking Guidance For Firms’ It Infrastructure Decisions: Twoempirical Studies, Jacob Yates

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the complexities of firms' IT infrastructure resource allocation decisions through two essays. The research utilizes extensive datasets and advanced statistical methods to provide nuanced insights into strategic IT decisions. Essay one examines the performance implications of mirroring the IT infrastructure resource allocation decisions of various leading firms, including leading IT firms (identified by InformationWeek), industry firms (based on performance), and business strategy firms (based on performance) through the lens of mimetic isomorphism. Findings indicate that lower IT infrastructure intensity generally leads to higher future performance, suggesting IT infrastructure could also be viewed as an expense (whereas prior …

Can You Hear Me Now? An Improvement Science Study On Policy Change In Public Schools, William G. Rhoden Jr.

All Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to discover what the perceptions of music teachers, specifically high school band directors in upstate South Carolina (S.C.), on their ability to affect meaningful policy change in SC public schools and what roadblocks exist or remain in the way of affecting policy change. Using improvement science as the methodology, this study employed the Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA) cycle to discover the effectiveness of this study, make recommendations for future research, and plan for future PDSA cycles. This study used interviews to collect initial data on the participants’ perceptions on their abilities to affect …

Georgia Library Association Division Officer Candidates For 2025, Kim Copenhaver

Georgia Library Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Establishing A Health Equity Office: The Importance Of Recentering Equity, Aswita Tan-Mcgrory, Amita Bey, John Cowden, Hans B. Kersten, Arie Nettles, W Cody Reynolds, Valerie L. Ward, Lenny Lopez

Manuscripts, Articles, Book Chapters and Other Papers

Objectives: The Pediatric Health Equity Collaborative (PHEC) set out to describe the best practices for establishing a health equity-focused office within a clinical setting. Study Design: Survey and in-depth interviews of the members of the PHEC comprised pediatric care delivery systems in the United States and Canada. Methods: Human-centered design methods were utilized in an iterative fashion to develop and agree on survey and interview domains. The final seven domains were as follows: (1) history of the office, (2) general description of the office, (3) position of the office in the organization, (4) budget and finance, (5) stakeholders, (6) community …

Nurturing Stability: Exploring The Relationship Between Child Welfare Workers’ Well-Being And The Impact It Has On Retention, Maritza Acosta-Gay

Education Doctoral

Child welfare workers are critical in ensuring the safety and well-being of vulnerable children and families. However, the demanding and emotionally taxing nature of their work has led to high turnover rates, impacting workforce stability and service quality. This study explored the complex relationship between child welfare workers’ well-being and job retention, seeking to uncover factors influencing their decision to remain in or leave the profession.

This qualitative phenomenological study employed one-to-one semi-structured interviews and thematic data analysis to gain an in-depth understanding of the firsthand experiences and insights of child welfare workers regarding their professional challenges and motivations. Participants …

Activities Eligibility: Building A More Equitable Approach To Support Students, Cory Holten

Theses and Dissertations

In this study, the researcher analyzed the impact of traditional cocurricular activityeligibility practices on minoritized students, students with disabilities, and students receiving free and reduced lunches. The researcher issued a survey to staff members at Horizon Middle School in Moorhead, Minnesota to gain an understanding of the perceived impact of participation in cocurricular activities and the impact and observed disparities existing as a result of traditional eligibility practices. As a result of the findings, the researcher proposes an alternative approach focused on identifying lagging skills through the collection of student data related to academic achievement, attendance, and behavior. Instead of …

The Healing Of Stories: International Teachers’ Lived Experiences Of School Culture Using The Hourglass Model For Mindful Reflections, Vesna Radivojevic

Theses and Dissertations

School culture affects all facets of teaching and learning. Starting from individual international teachers’ perspectives and their accounts relating to school culture, new insights and perspectives on the problem of practice were gained. The research focused on answering the questions: What are teachers’ experiences of school culture in international schools? What are teachers’ perspectives on critical components in developing a positive school culture? What was helpful to teachers when experiencing the positive and negative aspects of a school culture? A qualitative narrative research methodology involved interviewing ten international teachers who taught in K-12 grade schools in Australia, Asia, the Middle …

Erasing The Dividing Line Between Race And The Protestant Church: A Phenomenological Comparative Research Study, Janee M. Slade

Education Doctoral

This comparative phenomenological study researched how church leaders impact race relations in emerging multicultural Protestant churches, by analyzing the lived experiences of church members in multicultural churches. This study explored the strategies pastors use to manage race relations through the lens of transformational leadership theory. This comparative study compares the experiences of church members in an urban and suburban church setting. Semi-structured interviews were conducted at two multicultural churches in the Rochester, NY area. The first location included a suburban multicultural church setting with at least 50-75 members. The second location was a larger, more established congregation in an urban …

How Teachers Perceive Teacher Leadership In A Massachusetts Urban Turnaround High School: A Concurrent Mixed-Methods Case Study, Matthew Lawrence Mccarthy

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Turnaround schools represent a strategy for swiftly revitalizing underperforming educational institutions. This study examined how teachers perceived the role of teacher leadership within one urban turnaround high school. The study addressed the following research questions: 1. How do teachers within an urban turnaround high school conceptualize the role of teacher leadership? 2. In what ways does teacher leadership influence and contribute to the improvement of student performance in turnaround schools? This research was conducted through a concurrent mixed-methods case study that involved one urban turnaround high school. The findings offer valuable insights into teachers' perceptions of teacher leadership and its …

Activist Scholars: Faculty Of Color Navigating Institutional Rewards And Punishments, Mai H. Vang

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Faculty of color (FoC) often engage in social justice scholarship that focuses on the needs of minoritized communities. Yet, FoC often are subjected to suspicion and scrutiny over concerns of objectivity and academic rigor. Despite these barriers, FoC have demonstrated successfully navigating traditional institutional reward systems while making significant contributions to social justice knowledge and knowledge production at research-intensive higher education institutions. Exploring how tenured FoC at research intensive higher education institutions have earned academic success while engaging non-traditional approaches to knowledge production is important to higher education’s mission to broaden scholarship to be practical, political, and beneficial to society. …

Speech-Language Pathologist And General Educator Perceptions Of The Inclusive Service Delivery Model, Kellie Rine

Dissertations

The inclusive service delivery model is a philosophy of education that involves changing how educators address disability and provide educational services. Arkansas has recently developed a plan to implement inclusion whenever possible to better comply with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act guidelines for students with disabilities. Preparing for implementation, Arkansas leaders compared data from the Every Student Succeeds Act prior to and following the implementation of inclusive service delivery in pilot schools. Data were positive for increased achievement in literacy and mathematics. Arkansas has created a timeline for implementation, setting a goal for fully inclusive practices in Arkansas by …

Exploring The Integration Of Blockchain In Iot Use Cases: Challenges And Opportunities, Ivannah George

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Blockchain and The Internet of Things (IoT) is a significant paradigm which has gained traction in today’s digital age as two complimentary technologies. The combination of IoT's connectivity with blockchain's security creates new opportunities and solves problems associated with centralized systems. This culminating project aims to delve deeper into the integration of blockchain technology in IoT applications based on select use cases to uncover potential benefits and significant challenges of blockchain integration across different sectors. The research objectives to be addressed are: (RO1) How emerging vulnerabilities manifest in the implementation of blockchain within current IoT ecosystems. (RO2) How current opportunities …

Learning From Burning: Connecting Fire Managers And Fire Scientists, Coleman Lloyd Little

All Theses

The fire community is one of transparency and learning, and embedded in its culture is an openness of sharing successes and failures in order to learn and adapt. United by a shared desire to effectively understand and utilize controlled burns to successfully extinguish wildfires and research their lasting effects, fire managers and fire scientists coexist in partnerships commonly referred to as knowledge exchange networks. This research examines one such network, the Consortium of Appalachian Fire Managers and Scientists (CAFMS), through the experiences of some of its members, serving to develop an understanding of how the consortium functions as a knowledge …

The Effect Of Employee-Oriented Hrm On Employee Downsizing Following Mergers & Acquisitions, Pingshu Li, Mengwei Li, Hyesook Chung, Clint Chadwick

Management Faculty Publications

Firms have increasingly engaged in Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) activities in recent years. A common strategy following M&A is employee downsizing that aims at achieving strategic goals and enhancing performance. This approach, however, raises concerns from a strategic human resource management (HRM) perspective. Research suggests that downsizing may breach employees' psychological contracts and hinder the development of firm-specific human capital. While this viewpoint has an intuitive appeal, we reconsider it by suggesting that, in the M&A context wherein employees expect significant organizational changes, downsizing does not necessarily lead employees to negative reactions. Instead, if acquiring firms have strong employee-oriented HRM …

Law Enforcement Attitudes, Decisions, And Behaviors In Encounters With The Mentally Ill, Melissa L. Griffin

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Law enforcement officers frequently encounter challenges when interacting with mentally ill individuals, often resulting in negative outcomes. In this generic qualitative study, the attitudes, decision making process, and behaviors of law enforcement officers in such interactions were investigated, with a focus on identifying facilitators and barriers to peaceful interactions. Additionally, the goal was to explore how police officer training could be improved to enhance outcomes in dealing with mentally ill individuals. Using a generic qualitative approach, data was collected through in-depth individual interviews and analysis of relevant documents from police forces. Participants, selected through snowball sampling from Police Departments, shared …

A Theory Of Host Country Sentiments: An Illustration In Cross-Border Acquisitions, Daphne W. Yiu, William P. Wan, Xiaocong Tian, Kelly Xing Chen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Capitalizing on massive sentiment diffusion and mobilization aided by mass media and social media nowadays, we introduce a general theory of host country sentiments to illuminate the granular, context-situated, and time dynamic power of social sentiments. We posit that host country is a value-laden context wherein a foreign entity’s strategic action stimulates host country stakeholders’ social sentiments and engagement in systems of discourses (“sentiment arousal”), mobilizes social sentiments toward the foreign entity (“sentiment competence”), and legitimizes social sentiments and the strategic action of the foreign entity (“sentiment resonance”). To test our theory, we employ a context of inward acquisitions by …

Do Social Support, Supervisory Feedback, And Job Stress Matter To An Employee’S Sense Of Ownership? Context In The Lodging Sector, Aladin M. Ibrahim, Zyra R. Cabrera, Rodin S. Pescuela

Journal of Global Hospitality and Tourism

In the face of intensified competition within the hospitality sector, exacerbated by the challenges of post-pandemic recovery, organizations are increasingly focused on re-engaging employees impacted by workforce reductions and retaining those who demonstrate a strong sense of attachment, care, and commitment to their workplace. These ownership behaviors are pivotal in fostering organizational stewardship and driving performance. However, the question arises: how can organizations cultivate and enhance these positive employee behaviors? This study investigates the influence of leader- and work-related factors, including social support, supervisory feedback, and job stress, on employees’ sense of ownership towards their organization. Employing a survey methodology, …

Shame, Guilt, And Behavioral Responses To Conflict In Organizational Life: A Correlational Study, Lori Anne Shaw

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the relationship between self-conscious emotions, namely shame and guilt, and constructive and destructive behavioral responses to conflict among working adults in the United States. Researchers have underscored the importance of task-focused conflict and adaptive leadership in fostering positive conflict outcomes. However, the connection between shame and guilt and behavioral responses has yet to be explored. Drawing upon the Conflict Dynamics Profile and the Test of Self-Conscious Affect-3, this correlational study examined the associations between shame and guilt and 15 distinct behavioral responses to conflict among a sample of 203 participants, mostly women employed full-time. The cross-sectional survey …

A Document Analysis On The Role Of Innovation In The Strategic Plans Of Small Private Liberal Arts Institutions, Jillain Kaye Veil-Ehnert

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study provides interpretations of the nature of strategic plans at small private liberal arts institutions. The study explored the concepts of innovation, entrepreneurship, and transformation detailed in the plans. This study included a specific cohort of eight United States small private liberal arts colleges with similar characteristics regarding academic programs, enrollment, and fiscal stability. The research was conducted through document analysis of the institutions’ publicly available strategic plans. The data collected illustrates what the documents indicates about innovation, entrepreneurship, and transformation at small private liberal arts colleges. Key findings on innovations in the plans included a focus on …

Ilead With An Edi Lens, José Aguiñaga, Rebecca Stallworth

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

This conceptual paper introduces the joint San José State University, School of Information and Simmons University, School of Library and Information Science, IMLS grant planning project: iLead: Preparing Tomorrow’s Library Leaders. During 2023–24, the grant team project members are designing an asynchronous online program where library employees may earn micro-credentials. The online program focuses on developing leadership skills with an equity, diversity, and inclusion lens. Contributions from national, state, and local library partners during the development of this curriculum will assist in applying for a future IMLS implementation grant. For more information on iLead: https://www.ileadedi.org/.